WINX HAD DELIGHTED HER FANS, and the romantics, with her stirring late wins in the first two runs of her campaign, as the records and historical milestones continued to fly by. Yet there were hardened racing types who saw room for doubt.
The mare hadn’t beaten much in the Chelmsford, they said. The Warwick Stakes had also not rated highly as a race. Some expressed fears her new ear muffs had worked rather too well in the Chelmsford, dulling her alertness. Some said she needed more distance. Others wondered if the six-year-old had grown sick of running on hard tracks and would prefer the wet. That ever-present fear of mares suddenly losing interest resurfaced.
Waller was having none of it as he looked ahead to her bid for a thirteenth Group 1 in the George Main Stakes, again over the Randwick mile, two weeks after the Chelmsford. He reported Winx had thrived since that run and put on three kilograms. He said she was fine staying at 1600 metres, and that the ear muffs would remain.
Those watching in Australia and abroad were now accustomed to seeing Winx reach into her bag of tricks and pull out something spectacular — the barnstorming finish, the incredible sectional, the gaping long margin. What else was left in the bag?
Despite a few doubters, most were fully expecting Winx to move to outright second place in the ‘Streak Stakes’ with a twentieth straight win. Like the big punters, one of whom put $72,000 on her at $1.08, for a potential profit of $5760. Or like Waller’s rival trainers, who stayed away in droves. Only eleven horses were entered — five from Waller’s stable — forcing Racing NSW to extend nominations by a day. That move seemed only to allow rivals pause for second thoughts, for after acceptances were taken the field had dropped to nine. It would finally be eight after the late scratching of Winx’s stablemate Tom Melbourne.
In one area — international rankings — Winx had become a victim of her own success. The more she won, the more her rivals stayed away, so ratings boosts were at times hard to come by. That said, Arrogate had lately competed, and failed, against fields of five and seven, but remained number one, fuelling confusion.
In any event, the George Main Stakes drew a small but worthy field, and would rank as Australia’s third-best race of the year. With Winx starting $1.12 on the day, second-favourite at $15 was Happy Clapper, whose 113 rating was one above Foxplay, who started at $21. Two more who’d recently gone close to Winx, Red Excitement and Ecuador, were there again.
On a warm and sunny spring day, with the mare’s entourage huddled excitedly in their usual place by the winners’ stall — minus the bunkered Waller, of course — a large crowd, sprinkled with Winx flags, eagerly awaited another dose of wonder from the people’s horse as the gates flew open.
Josh Parr took Red Excitement to the lead again but, looking like he’d been primed for his big escapade two weeks earlier, there was no bold breakaway this time.
There was brief tension for Winx backers at the 600, when she was third-last, eight lengths back, with Bowman urging her for an effort that wasn’t readily coming. On straightening, as Red Excitement darted for home, Winx was still second-last and seven lengths behind.
But, given a flick with the whip by Bowman, the mare began her charge from the 300, and in seemingly no time hauled in new leader Happy Clapper. She hit the lead at the 150 and cruised to a length-and-a-quarter victory, as Foxplay trailed in Happy Clapper for the minor placings.
‘She just keeps on producing,’ said caller Darren Flindell. ‘Twenty in a row!’
Though Bowman eased Winx near the line, the clock soon revealed today’s trick. She’d set a new race record, her time of 1:33.65 minutes a tenth of a second better than Racing To Win’s 2006 mark.
Winx’s twentieth straight win, her eighth in nine attempts over a ‘mile’, had put her level with Sunline’s thirteen Group 1s, with only Kingston Town’s fourteen and Black Caviar’s fifteen now ahead in Australia, besides John Henry’s world record of sixteen.
In the end, it was straightforward. Waller was calm and composed; the media scratched for new things to say. Bowman, flying high, offered another airline analogy.
‘She didn’t travel into the race like we are accustomed to, which surprised me,’ he said. ‘But once she got a sense of where she was and what she needed to do, she just cuts in and accelerates. It’s like she’s on auto-pilot. She picked up Happy Clapper in about two strides.’
‘True champions come out and win,’ Waller said. ‘It’s great Sydney have embraced her.’
For now, though, despite ruminations on the Craven Plate, Sydney had seen the last of the mare before her attempt to emulate the Harbour City’s last great racing talisman Kingston Town, in a feat long assumed unrepeatable.
***
Though it seemed all that could’ve been said had been said, any news was hot news when it came to Australian racing’s pin-up girl.
One newspaper gave readers a list of seemingly, surely, absolutely everything they needed to know about Winx. There was almost-standard racing information — that her twenty-four career wins had come by an average of 2.68 lengths, and a hard-to-picture combined margin of 66.65 lengths. She’d earned an average of $444,449 across her thirty-one starts.
There was also more forensic detail. She now weighed 530 kilograms. She consumed 35,000 calories a day. In each race, her lungs breathed in and out 140 times per minute, distributing 150 litres of air per second, or 10,000 litres per race, which is what humans breathe in a day. She had a maximum heart rate of 240 beats per minute, shifting 60 litres of blood around her body in the average race.1
Reports came in that Winx had a new baby half-sister, with Vegas Showgirl bearing an Exceed And Excel filly hours after Winx’s George Main Stakes win. The foal was immediately valued at $3 million. Coincidentally, Vegas Showgirl had also given birth, to a Snitzel filly, hours after Winx’s 2016 Warwick Stakes win. Breeder John Camilleri would keep both of these fillies. (Some rare pieces of misfortune for Winx’s wider family were imminent, however. El Divino, whom Camilleri part-owned, and who had not won in ten starts since that Kindergarten Stakes win the day his big half-sister won the 2016 Doncaster, would break a leg in training and be put down later in the 2017 spring. And $2.3-million yearling purchase Boulder City, due to a series of minor problems, would be retired to stud unraced in May 2018.)
Still, Winx herself remained just about the hottest topic in Australian sport. And just when there seemed nothing new to hear about her, Waller sprang a surprise.
Eager to have her on the undercard for its new $10-million sprint race, The Everest, in mid-October, the ATC had months before pushed the 2000-metre Craven Plate back two weeks to Everest day, and boosted its prizemoney from $175,000 to $500,000. But while Waller had flagged that race as a likely last lead-up to the Cox Plate, he instead opted to send Winx to Melbourne earlier. Australia’s most famous horse would grace Australia’s most famous course, contesting the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington on 7 October.
The decision was based mainly on giving Winx three weeks between each of the George Main, Turnbull, and Cox Plate. The Craven Plate would be two weeks before the Cox Plate. The extra time between races would ensure more than sufficient recovery time, while Winx kept up her fitness with trackwork.
Waller also announced, by press release, that Winx would no longer wear ear muffs in her races, cured as she apparently was of the jitters of earlier in the spring.
Waller’s move to opt Winx out of the Craven Plate had two immediate effects.
Happy Clapper’s trainer Pat Webster danced a jig, having watched Winx beat his horse five times. ‘We’ve run second to her a few times,’ he said. ‘Someone else can have a turn in Melbourne.’ In the end, Happy Clapper managed only second, as odds-on favourite, in the Craven Plate, though he did claim a Group 1, finally, in the Epsom.
Down south, another old foe felt an opposite impact. Hartnell had been a short $2.40 favourite for the 2000-metre Turnbull, which he’d blitzed the year before. Winx now leapfrogged him into $1.20, and Hartnell wasn’t just wound out in the betting, but wound out of the race. Godolphin’s new head trainer James Cummings said he’d instead target Caulfield’s Underwood Stakes.
***
The Winx Show rolled to Melbourne with the city’s media eager to lay eyes on the mare who’d gone to yet another level since her last visit, extending her streak from fourteen to twenty.
On the Monday before the Turnbull Stakes, she stunned veteran track watchers, turning in a scorching track gallop at Flemington as Bowman let her loose. She was clocked to run her last 400 metres in just 21 seconds, around the same time as her flying the last 400 metres in the Warwick Stakes.
‘That’d be right,’ Bowman told double-checking journalists on dismounting. ‘She had the ear muffs off and she was feeling really good in her action.’
A forty-strong press pack flocked to Flemington for Winx’s light Thursday morning workout, more a media event than a fitness boost. As Bowman reflected, the build-up to this Cox Plate was ‘on another level’. Television crews conducted live crosses to breakfast shows. Radio journalists called in reports. There were even some Winx-related snacks to be had, with one enterprising food vendor at the course naming a doughnut in her honour.
After Winx’s work, Waller and Bowman faced questions about the increased pressures of an increased streak. This being Melbourne, the chance of an AFL angle was probed, and Waller obliged, likening Winx to newly crowned champions Richmond in the way she’d ascended from underdog status.
Waller commented that life in his Winx bubble was made a little easier by the mare herself, and her numerous stablemates.
‘On Saturday, I’ll be watching racing in Sydney, I’ll be watching a few runners here in Melbourne,’ he said. ‘But then, all of a sudden, you’re putting a saddle on and it’s Winx. If anything, having a bigger stable distracts the attention.’2
Melbourne — home of Black Caviar and Makybe Diva — had warmed to Winx far more quickly than it had to that other great northern ambassador dismissed early on as a ‘Sydney champion’, Kingston Town. Winning will do that, especially winning everything. In any case, on Winx’s third visit south, the shadow of The King loomed large.
Of course, there was the glittering prize on the horizon — the chance to match his three Cox Plates. In the Turnbull, she could equal his fourteen Group 1s and beat his record at Flemington, where he didn’t win in four attempts. And that weekend she was about to ‘beat’ him again, by winning a second Australian Horse of the Year award. Perversely, Kingston Town won it only once, after his stunning three-year-old season.
Winx was affecting Melbourne in other ways. Echoing the Caulfield Stakes a year earlier, at acceptance time for the $500,000 Turnbull there were only two other entrants. There was Ventura Storm from the stable of David Hayes, now training in partnership with son Ben and nephew Tom Dabernig. And there was Darren Weir’s Humidor. A quick call-around rustled up four other acceptors, of varying repute. With $10,000 for coming last, why not?
The four latecomers included mega-owner Lloyd Williams’ decent pair Assign and Sir Isaac Newton. With the only stipulation for entry being that horses must be at least four years old and have won at least one race somewhere, there was a hint of opportunism about the other two. Trainer Amy Johnston’s Skyfire would be taking the unusual step of going from a fifth of seven in a benchmark-78 race at Mornington straight into a Group 1. Magicool’s enterprising trainer Tony Romeo clearly saw the gelding’s previous start — last of ten in the Benalla Cup — as fitting preparation for tackling Winx. Adding to the have-a-go atmosphere, he engaged journeyman Chris Brown for the ride. A 46-year-old former New Zealand jumps jockey, Brown had been booked for two rides at the Gunbower picnic meeting, but opted for the Flemington Group 1 instead.
‘I can’t believe that I’m riding against Winx,’ said Brown, who’d get a closer look than most at the famous mare in action, if probably fleetingly. ‘It’s a great opportunity and will be something I remember forever.’3
Winx was short in the market, but again at enough of a price to sting bookies. The usual pre-race big bets were reported. One especially precise punter put $94,150 on her — all he had left in his account? — to win $18,830. Still, she’d start at a relatively long $1.20 on the day. The main reason was the presence of Humidor, who’d won two Group 1s at the track: the 2000-metre Australian Cup, and the 1600-metre Makybe Diva Stakes, thrashing Hartnell, at his last start. Bookies kept him safe at $7.50.
Weir didn’t share their doubt. Asked if Humidor was capable of upsetting Winx, the master trainer said bluntly, ‘No. To beat Winx, you’d want a bit of a head start, I’d say.’4
Stepping up 400 metres, in her fourth run of her campaign, Winx trotted past Flemington’s famous roses and on her way to the start under Bowman for her first race at the expansive, famous course, an outing fans hoped would become a twenty-first party. Many were there dressed for the occasion, including Lloyd Menz in his Winx coat, and his daughter Angela in a new royal blue dress with a white ‘M’ on the front, topped off like her father with a blue cap with white pom-pom. Winx flags waved by hundreds of racegoers fluttered in the spring breeze as all eyes trained on the 2000-metre start beside the Maribyrnong River, and the eight contestants got underway.
Brown celebrated his good fortune by darting to the lead on Magicool, ensuring a steady pace as Winx settled third-last, eight lengths back. By the 600, Brown’s time in the spotlight was predictably done, with Sir Isaac Newton taking the lead, and Assign and Ventura Storm looming. But the large crowd had come to revel in the presence of one horse only.
In extraordinary scenes, the roaring and applause started before the home turn, at the 500, as Bowman eased Winx wide. The noise continued all the way down Flemington’s long straight, sounding more like the unbridled whoops of a rock concert than a race crowd. Winx cruised to the front, untouched, at the 400, and skipped away, plucking some more history with nonchalant ease. She won by six and a half lengths from Ventura Storm and Humidor. Assign and Sir Isaac Newton were next, before a gap — of fifteen lengths — to gatecrashers Magicool and Skyfire.
It was a one-horse show of a fearsome kind. Had there been others fancied for the Cox Plate, if the picture in Australia wasn’t Winx first and daylight second, this would have been called an ominous warning. As it was, it was yet another glowing masterpiece, a reminder of greatness from the dominant force in Australian racing, if not the world. Humidor was a quality racehorse. Ventura Storm had won at top level in Europe. Winx toyed with them. While her three shorter Sydney wins had been relatively tight, she had now contested five races over 2000 metres since turning four, winning them all by an average of 5.3 lengths.
Winx was led away, to more rapturous applause, to prepare for her date in three weeks’ time with the most formidable piece of history of them all.